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The Why and How of Tweetdeck

What is Tweetdeck? The more people you follow on twitter, the harder it is to spot the good tweets out of the million of other not so good tweets. It’s next to impossible to read every single new tweet, especially when you don’t have much time available. Tweetdeck, run by Twitter, is a website which gives you the ability to filter all tweets into more manageable groups of people which can be viewed all on one screen. This means it’s easier to find the tweets you need to respond to, the best ones to retweet and the best people to follow. You can also schedule tweets which means you can seem active on Twitter, even when you’re on holiday or just not able to tweet.

(There are other sites that do this, such as Hootsuite, make sure to do your research and find what works best for you)

Logging in for the first time From tweetdeck.twitter.com, log in with your usual Twitter account username and password. The first thing you will see once logged in is a page with four preset columns.

The preset columns are:

Home: The full main feed of everyone you follow (like you would see on Twitter) as well as your own tweets Notifications: a feed alerting you of every time you have been followed, mentioned, retweeted, liked and added to someone’s list Messages: An inbox of all direct messages Activity: similar to notifications, it will let you know what the people you are following are liking/retweeting etc

There are many other different other columns you can add to your dashboard to filter the information including:

Lists: showing tweets from a specified group of people (either created in tweetdeck or pulled from any lists already created in Twitter)

Scheduled: showing all scheduled tweets

Search: The ability to track a particular word, phrase or hashtag. (you can search for the name of your church as people might be talking about you without mentioning your twitter handle)

You can add as any columns as you like and move them around until you have a layout that works for you. The dashboard can be quite confusing at first, there’s a lot to look at, but once you’ve refined the columns down to the necessary information, it will become a very useful tool in engaging with your followers.

How to schedule:click the new tweet option in the top left hand corner, you’ll see an option underneath the text box to schedule the tweet, here you can pick the exact time and date. Once you’ve clicked tweet, you will be able to see the tweet in the scheduled column and be able to edit and reschedule whenever you need to.

Things to Remember

You will also see that all the same options on Twitter are available here too i.e retweeting and favouriting. The search option at the top is also the same on Twitter, letting you search for users, keywords and hashtags which then can easily become another column.

The amount of Twitter accounts you have connected to Tweetdeck is limitless (This can be useful if your church has multiple twitter accounts)

Most importantly – It’s free to use!

Want to know more about adding columns and using Tweetdeck? Watch this video.
If you have any other questions about Tweetdeck, let me know in the comments below.